Page 36 of Knotted by the Mountain Man Dragon

And this is where everything changes.

The roughness falls away like a mask being lifted. The feral, desperate, possessive dragon who just fucked her into the mattress goes silent, and what replaces him is something quieter. Something vast and ancient and tender.

Her scent floods through me. Not just vanilla and blackberry but everything underneath: her warmth, her humor, her stubbornness, her courage, her heart. I can feel her. Not her thoughts, but her. The shape of her emotions, bright and overwhelming, joy and fear and desire and something I recognize because I feel it too.

Love. Hers. Pouring through the bond like sunlight through a window.

And mine flows back. Cedar and smoke and decades of waiting and the absolute certainty that I will burn this world to ash before I let anything hurt her.

I release the bite. Press my lips to the mark. Hold her against my chest.

“I love you,” she whispers. Her voice is raw and cracked and perfect.

“I have loved you since before I met you.” My arms tighten around her. “I loved you when I woke up to your scent in my dream. I loved you when I didn’t know your face. I will love you every morning for the rest of my life.”

I come inside her so hard my vision whites out.

Heat erupts through me. Not metaphorical heat. Dragon heat. Fire rolling under my skin, pouring out of me in waves, and I hear a crackling sound and smell smoke that isn’t coming from my nostrils and I feel the sheets beneath us get hot.

Very hot.

“Cage.” Mara’s voice. “Cage, the bed is…”

I open my eyes.

The sheets are on fire.

Not raging. Not an inferno. Small flames licking along the edges where my hands were gripping the mattress, orange and gold, spreading outward from my fists like my body decided the most intense orgasm of my existence needed a visual accompaniment.

“Shit.” I lower her carefully onto a section that isn’t actively burning and slam my palms down on the flames. Smoke curls up from the singed fabric. The room smells like cedar and sex and burnt cotton.

Mara stares at the scorch marks.

She stares at me. “Did you just,” she says slowly, “set your own bed on fire?”

My dragon, who has just completed the most sacred biological ritual of his entire existence, offers no comment. “It happens,” I say.

“It happens?”

“It’s… not common.”

“You lit the sheets on fire with your hands. While inside me.”

“Yes.”

She stares at me for three more seconds. Then she starts laughing.

Not a giggle. Not a polite chuckle. Full, body-shaking, tears-streaming laughter, her head thrown back on the pillow, her hand over her mouth, completely losing it while we’re still knotted together on a bed with smoking sheets.

“Oh my God.” She’s wheezing. “Oh my God, Cage.”

I should correct her on the name. I can’t. Because something about Mara laughing on scorched sheets with my mark on her neck and my knot inside her is so purely, absurdly, perfectly right that my dragon does the thing she noticed before.

The whole bed vibrates.

“You’re doing it again.” She’s still laughing, wiping tears off her cheeks. “The diesel engine thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”